Photography by Rosario Liberti
Some races are known for their remoteness and their route through natural landscapes, or a particularly challenging combination of turns. In the hills near Imola, Italy, the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari is both naturally beautiful and challenging even though the circuit is basically located in a neighborhood of local homes. Here’s why the vintage racing weekend is a must-see.
We previously highlighted only the red cars from the Imola Classic, which is to say we haven’t been able to convey just how deep and diverse the six grid weekend is. The fields are split among Classic Endurance Racing 1 & 2, Sixties Endurance, Trofeo Nastro Rosso, the Heritage Touring Cup and U2TC. This helps to keep the cars varied and compete closely against similarly interesting machines.
Most common to other vintage race meets are the Classic Endurance Racing grids, ranging from 1966-1981 and encompassing both grand touring and prototype racing cars from those years: in other words, the really fast stuff.
The Heritage Touring Cup, however, is grouped to enable entrants and spectators to relive the brightest days of the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) between 1966 and 1984. Over 19 seasons, the ETCC was the unrivalled theatre for track battles between the major European manufacturers. Spectators who were lucky enough to attend these races still remember the epic scraps between the best touring cars from Ford, BMW and Jaguar that competed here against ETCC oddballs like Volvo 242 GTs or a Ford Mustang thrown in for good measure.
For the Sixties Endurance category, all entrants must be older than 1966 and fit the sort machine eligible for the World Championship for Makes. We’re talking about the best cars from Ferrari, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Porsche, Lotus, and Abarth and the races that made them household names: the Carrera Panamericana, the Sebring 12 Hours, the Mille Miglia, the Targa Floria and the Le Mans 24 Hours. And those lucky residents of Imola can watch the cars zip by from the comfort of their balconies.
Finally, the category you’ve got to go to Italy to watch, the Trofeo Nastro Rosso: a field of Italian GT and sports cars. From Ferrari and Maserati Challenge cars to vintage Ferrari 250 GTs and Alfa Romeo TZs, it’s a wide-ranging category chock-full of curvaceous machines that, every few laps, you’d probably wish for the drivers to slow down so that they’d stay in view for a few seconds longer…
What’s your favorite vintage car seen at the Imola Classic?
